Nic Mathieu is in talks to direct Warner’s Robotech

Ad-maker Nic Mathieu is in talks to helm the feature film adaptation of the manga classic “Robotech”, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“Transformers” producer Akiva Goldsman and former ‘Spidey’ Tobey Maguire are producing along with Matthew Plouffe, Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell. A feature based on the property has been in development since 2007.

The producers conducted an exhaustive search in the fall to find a director who could bring a cutting-edge and modern approach to Robotech, which was a 1980s cartoon series from Harmony Gold USA and Japan’s Tatsunoko Productions. It was re-edited and re-dialogued to combine three Japanese anime series to give the producers enough episodes to air as a daily syndicated series.

A sprawling sci-fi epic, Robotech takes place at a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology on an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific island. Mankind is forced to use the technology to fend off three successive waves of alien invasions. The first invasion concerns a battle with a race of giant warriors who seek to retrieve their flagship’s energy source known as “protoculture,” and the planet’s survival ends up in the hands of two young pilots.

The project is a coup for Mathieu, a commercials director whose spots are known for their inventive CG effects but who has yet to make his feature debut.

Warners have also hired Mathieu to direct the David Keopp-directed “The Wind”, also something from the sci-fi realm.